Crime
Prosecutors are nearing the end of their case, setting the stage for defense attorney Kevin Reddington to begin calling witnesses.
Livestream via NBC10 Boston.
This story may contain content readers find disturbing. For help with postpartum mood disorders, text or call 1-833-TLC-MAMA for the National Maternal Mental Health Hotline. If you or someone you know is having thoughts of suicide, call 988 or go to https://988lifeline.org/ to chat online.
Lindsay Clancy’s murder trial enters its fourth week of testimony Monday as prosecutors near the end of their case.
When court was last in session, jurors heard the emotional journal entries and Google searches investigators found on Clancy’s cellphone after she strangled her three children and attempted suicide.
The notes ranged from affirmations — “I will overcome postpartum anxiety and depression,” “I am a great mom,” and “I love my kids” — to laments about being “terrified of something happening to my kids or doing something wrong to mess up their development.”
In one log from Oct. 25, 2022, Clancy wrote that she was “sad and depressed” she couldn’t parent her third child, infant Callan, like she had her eldest.
“I think I sort of resent my other children because they prevent me from treating Cal like my first baby. And I know that’s not fair to them. I know that,” Clancy wrote. “I was feeling so depressed last evening when Cora and Dawson [her two older children] came home from school. I know it runs off on them so we had a pretty rough evening. I want to feel love and connection with all my kids.”
Clancy, 36, does not deny she strangled 5-year-old Cora, 3-year-old Dawson, and 8-month-old Callan at home in Duxbury on Jan. 24, 2023. But she is raising an insanity defense as she maintains she was wracked by postpartum mental illness and heard a voice in her head instructing her to kill the children and herself. Her defense attorney, Kevin Reddington, has painted a picture of a loving young mother coming apart at the seams — at odds with prosecutors’ description of an “extremely controlling, meticulous, and manipulative” killer who had tired of her life as a mother.
As he cross-examined Timothy Chiappini, previously of the Plymouth County Massachusetts State Police detective unit, last Thursday, Reddington highlighted Clancy’s Google searches for “where is the carotid artery,” “how to slit your throat to die,” and “can you turn airbags off on Kia Sorento” — the type of car Clancy drove.
Clancy ultimately tried to kill herself after strangling her children, paralyzing herself in the process.
According to Reddington, Clancy’s internet history also showed “page after page after page” of Google searches for questions regarding bipolar disorder symptoms, psychosis, schizophrenia, hallucinations, insomnia, and medications for anxiety and depression, among other alarming keywords.
Just four days before the killings, she also Googled “can you treat a sociopath,” followed by a search for information about psychosis.
Reddington further emphasized Clancy’s texts with her mother throughout January 2023, and Chiappini confirmed Clancy messaged her mother on Jan. 14 saying she was “hanging in there and waiting for the day I wake up and feel [like] me.”
Sign up for the Today newsletter
Get everything you need to know to start your day, delivered right to your inbox every morning.